Friday, June 20, 2014


     I am traveling, alone, on holiday, in Brazil.  I am doing my best to avoid the World Cup, just driving, hiking, and taking in scenery, as well as these friendly, delightful people.

     From the beginnings of preparations this is being the most challenging, arduous trip I have ever taken.  Few people have any english and no one is fluent.  The street signs and road signs and other navigational aids, well they leave a lot to the imagination.  The cars go very fast, the trucks go very slowly, the motorcycles go between cars at twice their speed.  there is more but bottom line is I am having fun.

     There is a lesson here, something I have learned along the way.  A lesson for everyday americans.  Our culture, as promulgated by the powers that be, is steadily and increasingly numbing our minds, our imaginations.  we have been implicitly taught, incessantly, that easy is good.  I personally cannot speak for anyone else but easy makes me bored to tears.  I enjoy challenges, enjoy successes.  Whatever.  Not what I want to get into today.

     I just want to inform or remind everyone a bit of what it is like to be an immigrant or foreigner in our country (or any other!)  It is hard work!  Speaking a second language, no matter how familiar, requires more concentration and alertness.  Coping with all of the little day-to-day and moment-to-moment little choices and decisions that one has to make, in a foreign environment, requires  extra alertness and attention.  There are dnagers, small and large, in relying and trusting upon ones reflexes.  Many little decisions require concentration.  In Ethiopia, when you open a bottle of soda to drink, you keep the bottle cap and between sips you rest the cap on the opening, to keep out bugs and dust.  It is customary and wise and expected.  Its a little thing.  But there are just thousands of little things like this that different people do differently in different places.  If you spend enough time getting familiar with them you will gradually learn the original sources or reasons for every behavior.  Some mores are just artifacts, the motivation behind them is long expired but the behavior persists.  But some are significant.

     I am tired at the end of the day.  Exhausted.  I am not frightened or angry, its a good feeling but its tiring.  Nothing is easy.  I just want to point out that for foreigners traveling, visiting, or trying to live in the USA that they are working very hard, concentrating, and doing the best they can to learn and to fit in.  Respect is in order, where often annoyance is given.

Monday, June 16, 2014


     My personal portfolio has gained over 20% this calendar year, despite my somewhat haphazard, off-the-cuff methodology and my general timidity.  Most of those gains have come from a 150-year-old coal company.

     Reading, including stuff on their //r/energy as well as r/front, I can see that the large majority of young people in the US have been successfully brainwashed by the "climate change" campaign.  Most are convinced that any use of coal is courting instantaneous disaster, fantastic sea level rise, outrageous super storms, and other cataclysms.

     The USA is still the Saudi Arabia of coal, with the very largest and best seams ever found in the whole world underneath the Appalachian mountains.  Proper use does entail emissions control, to block soot, oxides and acids of sulphur, and mercury from getting into the air.  CO2 is a different issue and far too much has been written about it already, except that no one seems to catch the fundamental anachronism of the argument ... the advocates of "green" don't seem to even understand the most basic biological facts that when CO2 concentration increases in the atmosphere, the planet becomes more green.

     Even if I am correct and the "powers that be" have had their thumb firmly holding down natural gas prices in the USA for the last several years, the production of electricity from gas is still measurably more expensive than using coal.  However, as many people are just beginning to realize, the current prices are not enough to sustain the ongoing growth in demand brought about by the curtailment of the use of coal.

     Worldwide, the use of coal is growing faster than any other source of energy.  Please read that again.
COAL USE IS INCREASING WORLDWIDE.  Because its cheap and abundant.  Here's one source, I could find dozens if I hunted:

     Now the good politicians in Washington have gone and pissed off the russian bear by meddling where they don't belong in the bear's front yard.  Their response has not been surprising.  They have asked Washington and its allies to pay up for the gas they have been selling on credit.

    Europe is suddenly about to freeze.  Russia is quickly building pipelines to China so that the gas, once off, will never return.  The English, French, Germans, etc. will be able to get a little bit of gas from the Middle East but it will be considerably more expensive.  And it won't be enough.  In order to keep their countries from total collapse, their next alternative will be to buy coal from the eastern US and ship it across the Atlantic.

sorry, environmentalists ... your fantasies of solar, of wind, of algae, of hydrogen, of Santa Claus,  were very wonderful, but reality just came down the chimney....

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Bite the hand which feeds ....

     There's an item on the front page of reddit this morning which lauds the fact that the USA is now producing more oil, condensates, ng liquids and natural gas than any other country on earth, having surpassed both Saudi Arabia and Russia recently.

     I am sure that this is great cause for rejoicing and celebration.

     I have to admit, Harold Hamm has done a pretty amazing job out there in North Dakota.  Recently I saw an opinion piece which upped the estimates of total crude production from the Bakken from 1 mmb/d to 1.3 mmb/d for next year and upped the peak prodution estimates to 2 mmb/d.  That is very, very impressive.  Concomitantly, profitable production is still expanding in hithertoe-ignored places such as the Permian, the Denver basin, and the Marcellus.  With all of this new internal production, imports of foreign oil have fallen to levels not seen in the whole lifetimes of half our good citizens.

     As I have said before, one of the catalysts or causes of this growth has been the ultra-low interest rates, the cheap cost of capital, engendered by the Federal Reserve, for better or worse.

     What I want to write about this morning is our choices of friends out there in the globe....and our choices of enemies.

     Among the so-called "first world" countries, the most advanced technically, there are certain nations which are outstanding in their internal energy poverty, in their needs to import energy.  The first on that list has to be Japan.  The second has to be Israel.  Other prominent members are Great Britain, France,
Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands.  Those nations are all quietly approaching economic desperation as unit energy costs increase.

     Among the rest of the world there are certain nations which stand out as energy-exporting nations.
A list of the most important of these will certainly include Canada, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Angola, Khazakistan, and some other smaller players.

     Now US foreign policy has frequently treated Canada as if it were our little sister, pulling her pony tail and poking her at the dinner table, then telling mom and dad that she started it.  Meanwhile we have been perpetrating on going, steady, consistent, deliberate, ugly aggression and hostilities, for generations, towards most of the other members of that list.

     Why?  Exactly how stupid are we?  Do I need to spell this out, what the ultimate results are going to be?  The Bakken is not going to last forever, folks....

Friday, June 6, 2014

man versus animal

     This is another post, another view, on the subject of the essential difference(s) between people and animals.
    There is simply no other creatures known in this universe, besides people, which enjoy killing and do it just for "sport".  None.  Not great white sharks or leopards or white tigers or cobra snakes.  All other species which are able to kill, only do so either for protection or for food, or both.  None do it just for pleasure.  No breed of hunter, no matter how effective, ever attempts to eliminate a whole population of another specie or race just to get rid of it.

     We are so "special" ...